I definitely understand what your saying, but disagree to some extent. If I was in charge of mitsu i'd release the following line up:

-Eclipse gst and gsx both with 245hp. The gsx would be on par with the wrx in terms of performance but leaving weak ends so it doesn't compete with the evo (brakes, tranny, etc)

-3000gt vr4. With the old 3000gt being more of a sport touring car, I would do the same again. Give it 350-400hp, make it more of a "premium" car that older men want to cruise the freeways the mountain passes. It wouldnt handle like the evo or compete in the same category. It would hopefully capture a older demographic. It would also have a higher price tag.

-Evo. This could be left as it, as its a self sustaining car. It has its followers and those that bounce between subaru and mitsu.

Galant- Just make this car your nicer eco car. Use this model to capture the accord and camry crowd

Mirage- this is your bottom of the barrel car. It would compete with carolla and similar.

Mitsubishi would need to higher a new marketing team and refresh the company in my opinion. I would highly structure my commercials after the extremely successful Dominos commercials. If they can come on tv and say we realized our companies quality sucked, and we fixed the problems, come in and test drive the new mitsu.... I think you would put mitsu back on track. Something like "mitsubishi... reborn".

The problem with doing this, is of course R&D for new cars takes a lot f money. Money that mitsubishi probably doesnt have. But if they did, I really think they could emerge as a really powerful player in the car industry.

A lot of that would work in theory. The problem is that Mitsubishi seems to fumble in every way possible outside of the Evo (which of course still has room for improvement outside of the performance category). Outside of marketing, they just need some people with common sense in their design studios. I can't believe how ugly the upcoming Galant and Outlander look.

Mitsubishi as a whole has the cake to do it, but they likely won't want to invest too much money, so we're likely not going to see any new performance engines outside of variations of the 4B11. I'd vote against them making a 3000GT successor at this time (since it would likely be well over $50,000, and spending that kind of money on a Mitsubishi isn't going to be well-received until they turn their overall image around), but a more performance-oriented Eclipse would be cool. That brings me to my next thought...

With the success of Toyota and Subaru working together to make the GT86/FR-S/BRZ, I always wondered what it would be like if Honda and Mitsubishi worked on something together, both being competitors with Toyota and Subaru, respectively. Honda's current lineup is pretty depressing from an enthusiast viewpoint, but they did make the NSX and S2000 before. So maybe people from those teams can do some work with Mitsubishi (who obviously has a pretty good grasp on making turbocharged four-cylinders and AWD) and put their ideas together. Perhaps a Honda-branded coupe (rather than Acura, which seems to cater more toward luxury anyway) and then a Mitsubishi-branded coupe, with a RWD GS-T model and a more top-of-the-line AWD GSX with all of the Evo goodies, clearly at a premium. Even the RWD models could still get S-AYC. A turbo'd motor would definitely give it an edge over the FR-S/BRZ.